HE had borne himself with a singular dignity during the years
of neglect. Now the praise and admiration of a younger generation of writers and critics such as Francis Thompson, Alice
Meynell, Robert Bridges, and Father Gerard Manley Hopkins
were to fill his years with a calm delight. It was worth all the
years of loneliness to receive the discerning recognition these
new friendships gave him.

The meetings between Coventry Patmore and Hopkins were
sparse. They met only twice during the six years of their
friendship; but these meetings between two of the most remarkable intellects of the time must have been an exciting
experience for both poets, and they brought about a voluminous correspondence.*

Coventry Patmore met Gerard Manley Hopkins for the first
time when he paid a visit to the Jesuit School at Stonyhurst
during the summer of 1883. Describing this visit, Hopkins
wrote to his friend, yet another poet, Richard Watson Dixon,
on the 12th August of that year:

Coventry Patmore came to visit us and stayed three or four
days. The Rector gave me charge of him, and I saw a good deal
of him, and had a good deal of talk. He knew and expressed
great admiration of Bridges' Muse upon the strength of extracts
in reviews only, not having till that time been able to get the
poem from his bookseller. He told me that he was very slow in
taking in a new poet, even the meaning, much more the effect
and spirit; he said, 'I feel myself in the presence of a new mind,
a new spirit, but beyond that at a first reading, I am not yet
accustomed to the strange atmosphere . . .'

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